An Impasse Over Migration Strands Cubans in Costa Rica

By Victoria Burnett

Nov. 24, 2015

MEXICO CITY — Cuban and Central American officials met in El Salvador on Tuesday but could not agree on how to resolve a standoff over migration policy that has marooned hundreds of Cuban migrants in Costa Rica and tested regional relations.

The crisis, which has trapped some 2,000 Cuban migrants heading north through the region on Costa Rica’s border with Nicaragua for more than a week, has drawn attention to a surge in the number of Cubans leaving the island over the past year.

It has also raised new questions about American regulations that favor Cubans but were designed during an era when Cuba and the United States were sworn enemies, experts said. The two countries opened embassies in their capitals over the summer, ending five decades of official hostility.

Fear that those regulations may change as a result of the détente between the old Cold War rivals has spurred tens of thousands of Cubans to emigrate.

“You take off before there is time for them to take a decision that would work against you,” said Alexander Esquivel, a Cuban migrant who had crossed into Costa Rica on Tuesday.

In an episode that has an echo of the much larger migration crisis unfolding in Europe, more than a thousand Cubans became stranded in Costa Rica after Nicaragua closed its border to them on Nov. 15, saying it had not been warned by Costa Rica, to its south, that such a large group was on its way. The migrants are sleeping in improvised shelters, churches or out in the open, hoping to continue through Nicaragua and on to the United States.

Addressing reporters on Tuesday night after a day of meetings at San Salvador’s international airport, Hugo Martínez, the Salvadoran foreign minister, said that the countries would continue to look for a solution on a “bilateral basis” and that each would decide whether or not to allow Cubans to pass.

Nicaragua and Costa Rica exchanged recriminations, with Nicaragua in a statement accusing Costa Rica of “blackmail” in allowing Cubans to gather on its border. Costa Rica’s Foreign Ministry said Nicaragua refused to support “any solution” that would offer Cubans safe passage through the region.

Holly Ackerman, who studies migration flows and policies at Duke University, said Washington and Havana would have to negotiate a way to reduce the flow, even with the policy in place.

“It would be really hard to shut this down,” Dr. Ackerman said. She added that “it may be time to begin to say we are not going to have such an exception status for the Cubans.”

Under special migration rules, most Cubans who manage to reach the United States or a border checkpoint are allowed to enter the country and, after a year and a day, become residents.

Alexander Esquivel, a Cuban migrant who flew to Quito, Ecuador, from Havana on Nov. 12 and crossed Colombia and Panama by bus, said he had spent the $1,830 he amassed by selling “everything I owned — a bicycle, a television, a gold chain” — on bus fares and bribes to Colombian immigration officials and the police.

He had borrowed $400 from another migrant from Havana in the hope it would get him as far as the United States, he said in a telephone interview.

Many migrants like Mr. Esquivel are moving through Central America from Ecuador, the only country in the region that does not require Cubans to hold a visa.

“We know this is going to end soon, or at any time, so we decided to make a leap and go for it,” said José Luis Rodríguez, who left Cuba with his wife and $4,000 a few weeks ago. Mr. Rodríguez, who was interviewed at the Mexican border with Guatemala, said they “sold everything, and just got going.”

Nearly 35,000 Cubans came to the United States through entry points in Miami; El Paso; Laredo, Tex.; San Diego; and Tucson — between October 2014 and the end of August this year, according to data from the United States Customs and Border Protection. This compares with just over 22,000 between October 2013 and the end of September 2014.

The crisis in Central America erupted after Costa Rica on Nov. 10 arrested about a dozen members of a ring that smuggled Cubans from Ecuador to the United States and held hundreds of Cubans for several days on its southern border. Costa Rica then granted them safe passage, releasing some 1,600, who headed north to Nicaragua, which blocked their way. Hundreds more have joined that group.

Arturo López-Levy, a lecturer at the University of Texas and a former intelligence analyst for the Castro government, said that Cuba would take advantage of the situation — probably to pressure the United States to end a program that offers asylum to Cuban doctors — which has led to painful losses for the island’s health care system.

“If Cuba has proven anything in the past it is its ability to manage these migratory crises and send waves of people abroad,” Mr. López-Levy said.

Paulina Villegas contributed reporting from Tapachula, Mexico, and Gene Palumbo from San Salvador.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A4 of the New York edition with the headline: An Impasse Over Migration Strands Cubans in Costa Rica . Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe